


love at first sight

by Granspn



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon, Valentine's Day!, domestic beejhawk fluff!, gratuitous catch-22 references!, hawkeye being extremely neurotic!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-15 23:06:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29443809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Granspn/pseuds/Granspn
Summary: just imagining what these two might be up to one year for valentine's day <3"Hawkeye knows what he’ll do. He’ll make this Valentine’s Day so perfect BJ won’t even be able to think about leaving him without getting acid reflux. But he’s been so distracted that he’s only halfway through mixing the pancake batter when BJ wakes up.“Mornin’, Hawk,” comes a sleepy voice from the hallway. Great. Everything’s ruined already.“Oh, no, no, no, no, no,” Hawkeye says quickly. “You’re not supposed to come in yet. Come on, go back to sleep, you’re dreaming.”"
Relationships: B. J. Hunnicutt/Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce
Comments: 14
Kudos: 54





	love at first sight

Hawkeye wakes up first, because he always wakes up first, which is good. He needs a minute to think, and he was going to cook breakfast anyway. BJ’s arms are around him in much the same position they were when they fell asleep, and Hawkeye hugs his knees into his chest for a moment and reminds himself to feel it. _This is love_ , he thinks, and isn’t it miraculous? _This is the love you’ve been putting out for so long. Feel it. It’s coming back to you_. He kisses BJ on the inside of his elbow, lightly enough that he won’t wake up, and slides out from the embrace. BJ murmurs something in his sleep while Hawkeye runs a cursory hand through his hair.

“That’s telling ‘em, slugger,” he mutters back. He wraps his bathrobe around him, a blue checked flannel number that his dad sent him all the way from Maine, and ambles toward the kitchen, the argument from last night still ringing around in his head. He stops to brush his teeth and watches himself in the mirror as he foams at the mouth. They need to take Erin to the dentist soon; she’s been complaining of pain from some molars growing in. He writes a note on the side of his hand with the pen he keeps in the medicine cabinet for this purpose exactly. If he doesn’t write things down the second he thinks of them they might as well be gone forever.

Hawkeye likes the Sacramento house. He likes it a lot better than BJ’s old apartment in San Francisco that you actually had to ride an _elevator_ up to, and he likes sitting in the sun in the backyard and reading a book while the neighbors weed their garden and blast music on their radio. He likes teaching Erin how to make pancakes in the kitchen while she stand on a step stool next to him and BJ makes jokes from the gallery throughout and he likes having a family and friends and he likes his whole life here. He stands in the sunbeam that gets cast across the living room floor every morning and tries to breathe in the sunshine, tries to make it a part of him that he can put back into the world on a rainy day. _This is love. Feel it. It’s coming back to you_.

Hawkeye had been so sure that this was forever. Until last night, that is, since he has no evidence to the contrary except for the fact that they get up every morning and stay together. He’d been so stupid not to see it before. BJ was perfectly right that people always leave. That people always leave him. But people always leave when you’re least expecting it, or maybe it only feels that way because Hawkeye is never, ever expecting it. _Everybody puts up walls to keep some things out_ , he thinks as Wickett emerges from somewhere and hops up onto the kitchen table.

“Oh, come on,” Hawkeye says without conviction. “We eat on there, you know.”

Wickett pays him no mind. The scraggly gray cat yawns and paws at a corner of Radar’s letter that Hawkeye left last night without finishing. He’d gotten up to how lucky Radar felt to have Hawkeye there as a role model when he’d had to throw the letter down or felt sure he’d throw up something else. The words “lucky,” “Korea,” and “Hawkeye” really shouldn’t be in the same sentence unless you’re talking about buying lottery tickets from Kyung’s Deli in Midtown.

“You’ll never leave me, right?” Hawkeye asks the cat. Nothing. “Or at least you’ll never invest too much in me as a father or older brother figure or whatever that you think of me and the impression I made on you whenever you so much as see a pediatrician?” Nothing again. “Figures.”

Hawkeye sighs and pets Wickett behind his ears.

“Where’s Arrow, huh? You guys want some breakfast?” Nothing, except a few purrs under his hand. “You’re a real big talker today.”

Hawkeye sits down at the kitchen table and takes the cat’s little face in his hands so it’s as if they’re making eye contact.

“You think those guys ever split up?” Hawkeye asks him, meaning the real Arrowsmith and Wickett. “Or do you think they were soulmates? Or do you think even soulmates split up sometimes?”

Wickett mewls and Hawkeye releases him. He kicks the letter aside and curls up where it had been, the sunbeam now having spread to cover the table as well.

“Terry, I had the whole thing planned out,” Hawkeye says as he strokes him from ears to tail. “Breakfast in bed, coffee how he likes it. And let’s face it, coffee breath is better than morning breath if brushing your teeth is out of the equation… A little somethin’-somethin’ to pad out the rest of the morning… We could dance to the radio, have a candlelit dinner. Revel in each other’s company, you know? That’s all I ever want to do is just be with him, talk to him, do the things he wants to do. I thought that’s what he wanted, too.” Hawkeye gives Wickett one last big pet and rises to start fixing breakfast. “I thought that’s what he wanted, too.”

Without deliberateness Hawkeye gathers the ingredients for his favorite pancake recipe. The secrets are vanilla _and_ maple syrup in the batter, as well as half ground almonds instead of regular flour, and he stands on tip toe to get the sacks out of the cabinet.

“I can’t remember the last time Erin was at Peg’s over Valentine’s Day,” he keeps talking, partway between monologue and soliloquy. Wickett is there, of course, but he’s not much in the way of a scene partner. “Not that I would’ve minded her being here, nothing like that. I love working with her on a surprise for Beej and waiting for whatever they’ve planned for me, I love it more than anything. But I just figured… this could’ve been special. Kind of like– I mean, don’t you think it’s something we’ve missed out on?”

Wickett is well and truly asleep now so Hawkeye takes a brief romp around the house to find that sordid companion of his, and eventually locates Arrowsmith clawing at his favorite wicker chair on the back porch.

“There you are, you grumpy bastard, come to Mama,” Hawkeye says, scooping him up. He deposits him in the kitchen next to Wickett who hums, just like BJ when Hawkeye got up that morning.

“It’s just,” he continues lackadaisically organizing breakfast, “we have so few opportunities to feel _normal_. Every day we get up and we’re the odd ones out. I don’t mind that, never have, not really, or at least I figured since there wasn’t any other way for me to be then why fight it… But that’s not what it’s like for him! He needs that sometimes, that feeling of fitting in. Of all the things I can’t give him, that’s a big one.”

Arrow scratches behind his ear. Hawkeye does the same.

“Don’t you think that’s a big one? It’s just– Of all the times to have that fight, why did it have to be last night?”

Yesterday had been hard. That letter sent Hawkeye into a spiral he didn’t notice he was having until they were going to sleep, which is when everything kicked off. BJ was lying on his side, facing away, nearly asleep, while Hawkeye lay on his back with his hands behind his head (unusual). Suddenly Hawkeye rolled over and spooned BJ, all but shoving his face in the back of his neck (still unusual, but not uncharacteristic).

“How you doin’?” BJ asked.

“Not good.”

BJ turned to face him.“What kind of not good?”

Hawkeye didn’t answer right away. He fidgeted quite compulsively, running his hands through his hair, scratching at his collar. BJ took his hands in his and held them between their chests.

“Korea not good,” Hawkeye finally said.

“Ah.”

“The worst kind.”

Hawkeye fidgeted more. BJ let him wrest his hands from his grasp and twist and turn and rub his hands over his scratchy face until he was lying on his stomach with BJ leaning rather sideways over him, rubbing his back.

“I got you, Hawk,” he said.

Then when Hawkeye started, he really started.

“I have trouble understanding it, what I was doing there. Not what _we_ were doing there, that I understand, I mean, like– I have trouble understanding what I was to everyone there. I– I get these letters from Radar sometimes. I knew– I knew he looked up to me, God knows why–”

“Hawk.”

“I know, I know.” BJ thinks he has low self-esteem. It’s not a charge that’s leveled against him often, he’ll say that. “I tried to set a good example for him, I really did, but I didn’t know what I was doing, and I couldn’t– ugh!” He planted his face into his pillow and felt BJ’s hand warm on his neck. After breathing that in for another minute he looked backs up.

“All those people, relying on me, saying they relied on me. Everything always so precarious, one mistake and then suddenly– ” He made pleading eye contact with BJ.

“No,” BJ said.

“No?”

“No, Hawk. I’m made of sturdier stuff that that.”

Hawkeye was confused for a second, and then he thought he felt all of his blood leave his body.

“Oh,” he said. “I didn’t mean you.”

“Sure you didn’t,” BJ said, far too casual. Far, far too casual, like he thought Hawkeye knew what the hell he was talking about.

“Beej. What?”

Now it was BJ’s turn to look confused. Hawkeye pushed himself up, forcing BJ to turn back around so he was sitting up straight with Hawkeye leaning over him.

“It’s okay,” BJ said. “Babe, you don’t have to– I know you have that fear, that anxiety in the back of your mind that one day I’m going to leave you, because people always leave, but I know I’m not going to, and that’s good enough for me.”

His words were so direct, almost harsh, but his expression was so soft and his tone so gentle it was like he thought he was being kind. Except he was talking absolute nonsense. (So then why did Hawkeye’s insides feel like they were about to become his outsides?) Hawkeye laughed nervously.

“What? I’m not afraid you’re going to leave me.”

 _Shit_ , he thought. _Am I?_ He always knew he wasn’t really good enough for BJ the golden boy, BJ the personification of the American Dream, BJ whose parents weren’t speaking to him since he shacked up with a beatnik with a spiritual home in New York, but BJ seemed to love him well enough that he was happy to coast.

“It’s okay!” BJ said, reaching up to hold Hawkeye’s cheek in his hand. “I’m not mad, it doesn’t upset me. I know you have baggage, issues about this kind of thing. I accept that about you, always have, always will.”

“What,” he pushed BJ’s hand away, “are you even talking about?”

“What?” BJ said, smiling the way he does when he suddenly realizes he’s in way over his head. “I thought you were Mr. Self-Aware, that you knew all this already.”

“Well!” Hawkeye’s whole body seemed to flail and he kicked the blankets off of them. “Sure, I knew you could do a lot better than me, but I didn’t think you were going to _leave_! Is that an outcome I _should_ be worried about?”

“Better than you?” BJ sat up even straighter now that Hawkeye was practically on top of him, facing him, straddling his lap. “How could I do better than you?” Now that he was saying something nice, of course he sounded angry.

“You’re gonna make me say it?” Hawkeye said.

“Make you say what?”

“That you had a perfect life!”

“What’s perfect about being married to a woman when you’re gay?”

“Well, I don’t know, I’ve never been married to a woman!”

“Hawkeye!”

“Admit it, some things used to be easier before I came along.”

“What’s the use in that? You and Korea came along at the same time.”

“Well, thank goodness for that! At least I’m not upset about the war anymore, I’m upset about this! Nice going, Hunnicutt.”

“Hawkeye, you idiot, I’m never going to leave you!” As if to make his point, BJ leaned up and kissed him. Hawkeye accepted that, and leaned down into it with a small moan in the back of his throat.

“Beej, you maniac,” he said through more kisses, his hands gripping wildly behind BJ at his neck and back. “I didn’t _think_ you were going to! Why would you even– _aah_ – why would you even say something like that?”

“You’ve got a hair trigger, Hawkeye, I don’t know all the things that are gonna set you off.”

“Don’t use gun metaphors to describe me,” Hawkeye said before biting at BJ’s bottom lip.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. Or do. I don’t care. Just– wait.” He sat up straight again while the two of them breathed heavily in the otherwise silent night. He steadied himself with his hands on BJ’s chest.

“You can’t get out of this one,” Hawkeye went on. “What did you mean when you said you know I worry?”

“I didn’t mean anything! I meant that! I meant I know that you worry, and I don’t want you to, but you do, and that’s okay. I’ll never ask you to change something you can’t and you know that.”

“But I don’t worry, I don’t.”

“You do! And it’s okay. I promise it’s okay.” BJ ran a hand along the side of Hawkeye’s head, through his hair and down his whole body still he stopped at his hip.

“But I don’t worry.”

“You do.”

“I don’t”

“You do!”

“I don’t!”

“You– this is pointless, Hawk. Let’s just– why don’t we get some sleep?”

“Sleep,” Hawkeye repeated. “Now?”

“Yes.”

“It’s a big day tomorrow.”

“If you want it to be.”

“And you want to… get some sleep.”

“I– as a matter of fact, I’m prescribing it. Lie down, babe. I’ve got you.”

 _This is love. Feel it. It’s coming back to you_. Hawkeye let himself lie down. He let BJ curl his arms around him and kiss behind his ear in the way only lovers who mean it usually do. He even slept soundly, which he only does in BJ’s arms.

Hawkeye knows what he’ll do. He’ll make this Valentine’s Day so perfect BJ won’t even be able to think about leaving him without getting acid reflux. But he’s been so distracted that he’s only halfway through mixing the pancake batter when BJ wakes up.

“Mornin’, Hawk,” comes a sleepy voice from the hallway. _Shit!_ Everything’s ruined already.

“Oh, no, no, no, no, no,” Hawkeye says quickly. “You’re not supposed to come in yet. Come on, go back to sleep, you’re dreaming.”

“Hawk–”

“I’m serious! I’m bringing you breakfast in bed because it’s Valentine’s Day and you’re the love of my life, so would you shut up and get back in the bedroom?”

“Hawk–”

“Beej–”

“Hawk, I’m sorry,” he says, and Hawkeye loses all of his momentum.

“Don’t be sorry,” Hawkeye says. “Sorry for what?”

BJ stands by him at the counter and pulls him into a hug. Hawkeye can’t believe there was a time when he believed he was hugging BJ for the last time, that he was expecting to sustain himself for the rest of his life on a few seconds atop the 4077th’s helipad. Nowadays he doesn’t know what he’d do if he couldn’t hug BJ at will.

“I never should’ve– I’m sorry that I just–” BJ struggles to find the right words. Hawkeye kisses him to give him some time to think. BJ kisses back rather contemplatively. “I think next time we talk, I’ll do a little more listening.” 

“I could go for that,” Hawkeye says.

“Okay.” BJ grins. “Hey, Hawk.”

“What?”

“Happy Valentine’s Day.”

Hawkeye grins back. “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

They kiss once, swiftly, like a married couple who does it cursorily every time they pass each other, then again, for a little longer, like college sweethearts before they part to go to separate classes, then a third time, dramatically, desperately, not parting for as long as either of them can take it. BJ dips Hawkeye ever so slightly and suddenly he knows what all those Hollywood starlets feel like just before they swoon.

When they finally come back to earth Hawkeye blinks up at BJ and kisses him one more time, quickly, like the first.

“Hey,” BJ says.

“Hey.”

“I love you.”

“Oh. That’s a relief.”

At least when BJ rolls his eyes Hawkeye knows it’s lovingly.

“Listen, BJ–” Hawkeye starts as he returns to making breakfast.

“Ah, the first test.” BJ moves to fill the coffee kettle.

“Right. Listen. Let’s still do breakfast in bed, okay? I still want to have a Valentine’s Day so commercially perfect they should make movies about it, you know?”

BJ taps his fingers on the countertop. “As long as that’s what you want.”

“Well–” Hawkeye whisks eggs into his batter. “I figured that’s what you’d want.”

“Hawk, I want to do whatever you want to do.”

“Well, _I_ want to do whatever _you_ want to do!”

“We are getting nowhere fast.”

“Correct.”

“Hawk. What do you want to do?”

BJ touches him on the arm to make him put down his cooking and actually look at him, and actually think. He tries to remember any other time in his life when he’s so seriously been asked that question. For so long it felt like his every important decision was being made for him, even as everyone around him told him he was completely out of control: pencil pushing doctors behind desks who thought they knew better than he did, the officers at his draft board telling him where he was going to serve, his own mind keeping him from knowing the whole truth of his situation supposedly for his own protection. But now he has BJ, who wants him to be just as free as he always thought he deserved.

“Want to skip breakfast and go straight to bed?”

“That, I can get behind.”

They spend a lazy morning in bed expending the little energy they didn’t build up from not eating breakfast until they agree they simply must have some food, and BJ resolves to order delivery from their favorite diner. As it’s only going to be a phone conversation he neglects to put any clothes on as he starts walking back out into the hall, though this is possibly only for Hawkeye’s benefit.

“Like what you see?” he says, re: Hawkeye’s staring.

“Uh-huh. You should go out like that more often.”

BJ smirks.

“Oh,” Hawkeye says. “You’re hot when you’re devious.”

“You’re hot when you say ‘hot,’” BJ says, and tumbles back into bed.

Hawkeye doesn’t know how he got so lucky. Sometimes he remembers the first time he ever fooled around, with Tommy, in his tiny bedroom in Crabapple Cove keeping quiet so his dad wouldn’t hear them. He remembers the feeling of _oh, so this is something I like_ , and how fucking unfair it was that at the same time he was realizing what really made him tick he then knew he’d lost the opportunity to have a truly normal life if he wanted to be able to be himself.

If he could go back in time and tell his sixteen year old self that– that what? That the first boy he ever loved was going to die in his arms ten thousand miles away in a war zone? That he was going to be in a war zone at all? That he was going to meet the love of his life there and suffer and inflict more misery that he’d thought possible but he was going to come out of it alive if not unscathed and end up with his own version of a happy ever after? He probably still would have gone through his whole life not believing it.

He’s still thinking about it hours later when he’s cooking dinner side by side with BJ, fresh pasta and tomato sauce. Hawkeye leans against the kitchen table sipping from a glass of wine while BJ stirs the sauce.

“How the hell did we get here?” he says. He can’t keep from beaming as he watches BJ at work.

“Well, we put everything in a big truck in San Fransisco and we drove down the–”

“You know that’s not what I mean,” Hawkeye stops him. “I’m trying to be a romantic, here.”

“You’re succeeding,” BJ says. “Taste this.”

BJ holds out the wooden spoon to him and Hawkeye blows on it to cool it down, eliciting a set of raised eyebrows.

“What?” Hawkeye asks innocently. “It’s hot.”

“I’ll say.”

BJ kisses him while the sauce is still on his tongue and Hawkeye laughs into it.

“Silly,” Hawkeye says when they break apart.

“I should hope so.”

It seems like there isn’t one moment over dinner that isn’t filled with laughter. One or the other or both of them is always in mid-peal, always ready with the next thing to say to perfectly compliment and tickle the other in a way that makes Hawkeye so grateful that BJ found him.

There’s a sense in which Hawkeye thinks BJ isn’t his soulmate, isn’t the one person on earth who could make him perfectly happy for the rest of his life. He certainly thinks BJ will, and he isn’t looking around and he absolutely abhors anyone who thinks he is just because he used to have a reputation for promiscuity. But Hawkeye is always able to form deep connections, to fall in love. There’s a sense in which he thinks he might have been happy to live like this with Tommy, or Carlye, or Trapper if he’d had the chance. But he hopes he isn’t being uncharitable when he thinks he might be it for BJ, or at least it for him because of the life he’s had so far. He never used to understand BJ’s big deal about being needed, but now that he’s gotten a taste of how it feels… he won’t deny that it’s comfortable and comforting, the way BJ needs him and isn’t afraid to tell him that every once in a while.

They end up on the couch with a record playing, some Tchaikovsky that arrived with Charles’ compliments for Hawkeye’s last birthday– he’d been impressed once by Hawkeye’s knowledge of the composer, seemingly unaware of the fact that every single person on earth has heard of the 1812 Overture. Hawkeye’s curled into BJ’s lap with Wickett curled into his and he also starts to understand what people like so much about married life, provided they’re doing it right. Of course, he and BJ aren’t doing married life at all, but that’s hardly their fault. He wonders if BJ wishes they could get married. He’s sure he does, and decides not to bring it up since he unlike BJ has worked out what not to talk about in order to avoid undue stress.

He doesn’t mind. Everybody builds walls to keep some things out. Everybody has blind spots. Hawkeye’s sure he has his.

“Okay, wait here, I got you something,” BJ pats Hawkeye’s thigh and gets up to start rummaging in their room.

“Beej! You said no presents!” Hawkeye calls to the back of the house.

“I lied,” he says as he reemerges, holding a square package that’s obviously a book. “I talked to Sally at the bookshop for easily upwards of an hour to pick out the right one.”

“I didn’t get you anything,” Hawkeye says softly, taking the book and running a thumb over one of the neatly wrapped corners.

“You got me a perfect day. With you,” he says with finality, like it should have been obvious. Hawkeye rolls his eyes. Sometimes it’s hard to tell which of them is sappier. “Go on, open it.”

Hawkeye unwraps it not with the vigor of a child on Christmas morning but still with characteristic lack of care for neatness.

“ _Catch-22,_ ” he reads off the blue and white paperback with a strange red figure of a man in the corner.

“It’s about world war two,” BJ says sort of like a warning, stopping Hawkeye from indiscriminately fanning through the pages and seeing something that he doesn’t like. “But really it’s about war in general.”

“Everything is,” Hawkeye says without looking up.

“I really think you’ll like it. I mean, it seems– you might have to go slow, but… it’ll be worth it, I think.”

“I remember the first time I heard that,” Hawkeye says with sufficient cheekiness.

“I bet,” BJ laughs. “Babe?”

“Yeah?”

“Read to me?”

“I thought you’d never ask,” Hawkeye says, grinning. Hawkeye stretches out along the whole length of the couch with BJ nestled sort of on top of him using his stomach as a headrest, his feet up on the arms of the couch since of course he’s too tall to really pull that off. Hawkeye opens to the first page and bursts out laughing.

“What?” BJ says, smiling wildly.

“Did you know this was the first line?”

“Did I…?”

“Don’t play dumb with me, you knew! This whole thing, all of this, just a set up!”

“Hawkeye! Read!”

“I’m reading, I’m reading! Ready?”

“Hawkeye!”

“Okay, okay. I’m starting now. Ready?”

“Hawkeye, this is torture.”

“I said I’m starting! Comfortable? Should I– am I poking you?”

“Ha-awk! If I wanted you to make me wait I’d say. Now read to me or I’m leaving.”

Hawkeye gasps. “Not funny, sweetheart.”

“Oh, yeah?” BJ turns over and looks up at Hawkeye like he might make a move but instead he just says, “Read!”

“Okay!” Hawkeye laughs and BJ collapses back down on top of him. “Oof! Gently, please. Some of these parts are nonrefundable.”

“Sorry, baby.” BJ leans around and kisses him somewhere on his side that he can reach. Then he closes his eyes and looks so peaceful. That’s the only beautiful thing in this world, really, peace, Hawkeye thinks.

“Chapter One,” Hawkeye reads. “The Texan. ‘It was love at first sight.’”

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! the quote at the end is the actual first line of catch-22, of course <3, and their cats are named after arrowsmith and wickett from "arroswmith" as i am wont to name them
> 
> i'm @crickelwood on tumblr if you want to say hi!


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